This article was originally published on 1/14/2014, and has been updated for freshness and accuracy.

Are you one of the companies that spend money every month on SEO services but haven't spent the time to build conversion paths on your website? Your rank on Google doesn't pay the bills. Either does website traffic alone. If your goal with your website is to get new customers and grow your revenue and profits then you have to look at the whole picture. Long gone are the days of your website being simply an online brochure. Your website should be your top performing 24/7 sales rep.

The fact is that most websites aren't built to perform the tasks business owners want them to accomplish. It's not your web designer's fault really, you probably didn't hire a marketing-focused web development firm like Revenue River. You probably didn't pay them to begin with the end in mind and work backwards, you just hired them to design a pretty website. Pretty websites don't pay the bills because they don't have a method of capturing leads positioned throughout.

Less than 3% of website visitors are willing to fill out a contact form on your website

They're simply not ready to buy. They're looking for information and they're looking for resources. They want to figure out whether you're credible, resourceful, and knowledgeable before they spend their time meeting with you. Just because they found your website doesn't mean they're ready to be your best friend.

It is important for you to provide ease of use access to your website visitors to allow them to "shop" the website in the ways they want. Provide easy to identify avenues to different pieces of information that let the user drill down further into your site at their own pace. But it is also important to be able to gain insight to their buyers journey through analytic data.

Make sure that you can dig into the following datapoints:

Can you see who was on your website last month?

Can you tell where they came from?

Can you tell what pages they visited and what made them leave?

Focus on Conversions!

You need to design your website to convert traffic into leads at the top of the sales funnel. Your contact page isn't the place to do that, it's your home page, your services page, your about page, and your blog. These are the pages that typically have the most visibility on your website and provide the greatest opportunity to convert traffic into leads.

The missing link here is that traffic means nothing without conversions. You want to harvest people’s contact information who are interested in your services but not yet ready to pick up the phone is the foundation of inbound marketing. Take a genuine and helpful approach, not a hard sales approach. If you focus on genuinely educating the user and providing information that benefits them, you will attract more traffic than you would with trying to convince them to buy right away.

How CTAs can Influence Conversions

Many visitors to your site may still be considering their options, their time frame, their budget, etc. and giving them something to help their decision process makes you a resource. Laying out clear call to action (CTA) will give them something to do on their visit. These CTAs should be bold, inviting, and build value around your resource to spur clicks.

When clicked, these CTA should provide the user an unassuming conversion opportunity by presenting them with a form that is not overwhelming and doesn't ask for more information than the user is willing to give up for the value of that particular offer. This can be in an animated window pop up, a redirect to a landing page or through a form embedded right there on the page.

Every page on your website should contain one or more CTAs. You will see a much greater conversion ratio for prominent CTA placement rather than burying them at the bottom. You’ll also find better conversion rates by mixing up the design elements and colors to make them stand out. Make sure that your CTA is connected to the surrounding content to provide context to the user. By tying in your conversion points to the content they are embedded in, you can provide relevance to the user which will increase your conversion percentage.

Where You Should Put CTAs

There is a lot to look at on a web page, your goal should be to drive their eyes to your offers so they get more clicks. For example, check out this infographic pictured below, you’ll notice placement suggestions for 4 different CTA above the fold (in light blue). Get something similar going on your website right away, you won’t be disappointed when dozens of new contacts come to you every week.

The main parts of a website from top to bottom are Header, Banner, Body and Footer. Some websites will break up their body area to include a sidebar on the left or right. Each area presents a unique opportunity for a conversion.

For example, we included a very basic Request a Quote CTA on a client's website that has resulted in over $350k in new deals. Who would have thought a simple button in the header could have that type of impact? Check out the success story here.

If you have different divisions or areas of your business that are relevant for different personas, presenting those directly under the banner area is a sure fire way to gain visibility and provide easy access for users depending on which service/division they are interested in.

Bonus Tip: A popular way to layout websites to divide valuable content and increase ease of navigation is to use containers. Adding containers or web boxes to your web page creates a layering effect and separates valuable pieces of content from the background and imagery.

With a better idea of what it takes to generate leads with your website, you're ready to take a critical look at your website. If you find that you need the help of a web development firm like Revenue River. We'd love to take a look, but if you're not ready to talk to us, check out some of our resources.

When you're ready, reach out to our team for a simple and free website redesign strategy session. We'll evaluate your current efforts so that we can create a strategy for your website moving forward. You never know, it might just make you think of something you've been overlooking. That could mean more leads, a full sales pipeline, and even more ROI from your marketing efforts.